


Empirebent

by stellaver



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternian Empire, Gen, Gladiators
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2235708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellaver/pseuds/stellaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many names for the Empire, but most call it Piscean, after the symbol of the Empress who established it. It's infinite, spanning galaxies upon galaxies and ruling it, Her Imperious Condescension and her descendants. With such a large space, there is of course cultures inhabiting it. Different species inhabiting planets under their rule, all forced under the confines of the hemospectrum. At the bottom, lowbloods, mutants, and humans, they all are treated like dirt under the boots of the highbloods.<br/>Karkat Vantas is one of those mutants, and Feferi Peixes is one of those highbloods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ferrum

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea that I've had for a long while: The Alternian Empire but basically as an intergalactic Rome, complete with anachronistic cultural references and perhaps a bit too much Latin than was necessary. And of course gladiator games, because who doesn't love those.  
> I don't have much to say on the characterization--I'm writing characters I don't usually so if there are any glaring mischaracterizations, please forgive that.  
> Also there's like, very little shipping. Sorry bout that.

His life could very easily be described as grey.

From his clothes, to the skies, to the sand he tromped underfoot. Even the faces he saw were just grey, grey, grey. The same color of slate and iron, the sickle that hung at his belt, the color he much preferred to bleed.

He tromped through the crowd, hood up and head down. That was all that mattered, that he kept his hood up and his head down. He needed as little attention as possible.  
That turned out to be easy. It was the thick of the night and there were dozens of lowbloods on the streets, and a few human faces scattered around, if infrequent. He didn’t give much thought to them; he rarely did, much less now. He had an hour to spare and a transport to catch, and he couldn’t afford to miss it.

The transport was on course to the colony of Vena. It was a part of the New Sgrubian galaxy, some light years away from his current location on a planet he didn’t remember the name of. Vena was volcanic to the point of near inhospitality. The air hung with smoke, and the oceans were rich in different minerals that made the water almost as bright a red as the despicable blood that ran through his veins.

It was the place that wanderers went when they had no place to go, and Karkat Vantas was indeed a wanderer.

Someone ran into his shoulder, causing him to flinch. But he was in a crowd, he expected to be bumped into, but the presences of the people around him set him on edge. After all, he was a criminal, if for doing nothing else other than existing. 

The troll, who he can say had the largest, most obnoxiously horizontal horns he had ever seen, let out a hiss. Their clothes, like Karkat’s, were all grey and black garments, no hint of their blood color, but Karkat could assume that he was just some common lowblood. He muttered nothing as he shoved past the troll and began picking his way out of the crowd, thankful for the short stature that allowed him to duck under the lowblood’s horns. There were grumbles and protests, all ignored as he had more important things to do.

Not soon enough, he exited the crowd with a malcontented push from one of the trolls he shoved by. Karkat straightened up, fixing his hood and turned to return the growl at the aggressor, but decided against it. That already had eaten up a good ten minutes of his precious time; he had better things to do

The planet he was on was dark, dull, dreary, and a variety of other words that likely also started with d. It was all grey ash that made up the ground, with mounds and spires of stone dotting the plains that stretched for miles around them until they met a petrified forest. Any sort of color that did exist was leeched into the atmosphere—the orange of trolls’ eyes and horns, and the occasional brown or tan of a human complexion, were all washed out in this horrid monochrome air. 

The square, which was the best term he could think of for it, was a pathetic excuse for a colony forum. There was an open square surrounded by stands of weapons, food, and so on, and mounds of rock too large for anyone to bother to move. Someone had attempted to pave the ground in it once, leaving a few cobblestones scattered sparsely. It was hardly a place of excitement, but for an infidel, that trait is one of protection. He might have considered staying, if it weren’t for the unsatisfactory company. Overcrowding had pulled the planet’s already strained resources into a dearth. 

Even now, Karkat could feel his stomach panging and empty, which he was looking forward to amending when he arrives to Vena.

He pulled himself to edge of the forum, towards a stand stacked with weapons. On top of the basic stock, there were models of famous gladiatorial weapons, tridents and harpoons and hammers. The sight of them alone made Karkat sick with nerves, recalling childhood nightmares of being dragged away in chains and forced to compete like the few neighbors he’d had. It was after these nightmares subsided that Karkat had begun his life as a vagrant. He’d lived a lot of places in those three sweeps, so many planets he’d long since lost count of them.

To make matters worse, there was a port-screen hanging from the awning of the stand, broadcasting the latest match. An olive blood bestiarius, with a small but strong build and her share of scars littering her face and arms, taking on a beast twice her size. She was armed weakly, with three long, metal claws attached to her gloves, but nothing more than basic armor to avoid hindering her movement.

“Not a bad match, if I do say so,” said the troll behind the counter. He was clearly several sweeps older, probably a few perigees away from being drafted into the Empress’s army, and had marks—scars or tattoos or something, tinted a greenish blue—running down his arms. There were several nasty ones on his face, causing his lip to permanently sneer. Karkat had no idea what this guy could have done for that to happen; he didn’t want to. “’Course, I bet a lot of money on her. Everyone will say that about their winners. Was a bit apprehensive at first, gonna vote for the big blueblood, but worked out for me in the end.”

“Anything to save a few caegars, I’m sure,” Karkat grumbled to himself, pretending to scan over the array of weapons as if he had money to buy them. Every last beedle of his went into paying for transport to Vena.

The concessioner heard him, and narrowed his mutilated eyes. “What was that?”

Karkat looked at him, his gaze nearing a glare from under the hood of his stitched up cloak. This troll was bad news, he could tell. So, of course, he replied, “Nothing, just calling you cheap.”

Just then, Karkat got a very good glimpse of the troll’s teeth. Almost his entire mouth was long deadly looking fangs, all bared at him and his attempt at being witty. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from scum like you without a beedle to your name. What color, filth? Rust?”

“It’s a very nice shade of none-of-your-fucking-business,” Karkat replied, his instinct overriding his reason. “Of course you’d ask that, piss stain. After all, you’re nothing but a midblood throwing your weight around in order to make yourself seem higher than all of the groundling lowbloods.”

“That is simply because I am higher than you, robigo,” the troll spat. “For that matter, I should report you for speaking to me like that.”

Karkat scoffed. “Anyone with half a sponge for a think pan knows that that reporting system is bullshit. They won’t do anything. You’re too green for their tastes.”

The troll let out a guttural snarl, grabbing Karkat by the front of his cloak and hoisting him up. Karkat regretted this, slightly. At least, he regretted picking it with someone twice his size. A knife grazed his cheek, sleek and curved like an arbela. 

With the blade pressed against his cheek, Karkat realized his mistake too late. He grabbed at the troll’s wrists, but his grip was like steel around the front of his cloak. He shifted his hands back, where the buttons were fastening the fabric around his neck.

The concessioner sneered, press the blade to Karkat’s face, but not yet drawing blood. “So, scum, how about we see what color of piss runs through your veins, hm?”

Flump!

The troll stared at the scrap of grey fabric in his hands. The silver buttons fastening it shut had been undone, and the cape had fallen open and dumped Karkat along with it.

Karkat got to his feet, noting the damage. There was a graze along his cheek from where the concessioner had held the knife, and Karkat immediately used one hand to stifle the blood flow. He could feel the sticky wetness against his hand as he moved the right one to grab his sickle.

He took a step back as his adversary jumped over the stand. The guy was even bigger out in the open, ditching the arbela and opting for a much bigger weapon: a double-sided axe.

Karkat wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now. He screwed up phenomenally, with one hand staunching the blood flow (which, if the troll saw it, he would be even deader than he was already) and the other holding his flimsy little sickle against a troll twice his side who owned a god damned weapons stand.

Just as he was steeling himself for the likelihood that he would be chopped to bits by this tealblood, a very pointed voice broke their stand-off. “And what, may I ask, is going on here?”

The interloper stepped in between them, a fanged grin on her face despite the circumstance. Her hair was short and spikey, as were her horns, which were points where they erupted from her temple. She was dressed in traveler’s clothes: gloves and a vest over a tunic and breeches. Her vest and gloves were both a bluer teal than Karkat’s opponent, proudly proclaiming her status above them both. 

He was taken aback at the pair of glasses she had on, colored the shade of abominable candy red that was currently soaking his sleeve. She was taller than Karkat, but was still dwarfed when she turned to face the concessioner, who was still hefting his axe. Despite the disparity, she didn’t hesitate.

“I believe I asked a question,” she said, her words just as pointed as her horns, though the smile never left her face. “What is going on here?”

Despite their obvious size differences, the concessioner seemed to shrink in front of her. So much for flaunting his blood status, Karkat mused. “This lowblood trash insulted me at my own stand. I couldn’t let the infraction pass.”

“Is that so?” The troll turned towards Karkat, who was still holding his now blood soaked sleeve up to his face. She was turned towards him, a white cane with a weird looking head that he hadn’t seen before planted in the dirt in front of her, but it didn’t seem she was looking at him behind her glasses, and when she spoke, she was talking to the concessioner. “Nubs like that, and you thought he was worth bothering to fight?”

Karkat wanted to be offended. And he was, a little bit. But his sense of relief overpowered whatever offense he felt. He didn’t know who this girl was, but he was thankful, at least for the moment.

The concessioner grunted, folding his marred arms over his chest. “He insulted me, my lady. Called me cheap, said I was a midblood throwing my weight around, and that I was too green for the upperclass to care.”

The girl let out a sudden cackle, turning back to the troll, who stepped back in surprise. “Well, at least he’s honest,” she said, her grin wider than ever as she swung her cane through the air.

The next few seconds were a blur. Her other hand shot out and grabbed the end of the cane, and she pulled it apart. The two halves gave without issue, two long, thin, and wicked sharp blades emerging from the hollow of it. She stepped forward and, without giving the concessioner a chance to react, held them up to his throat.

Karkat only saw her back, so he wasn’t sure of that mad grin was still on her face as she said, with sudden deadly calm, “By that I mean, he’s completely right. You, sir, are indeed throwing your weight around, and I will not stand to see you take it out on this lowblood.” The concessioner tried to speak, but she tightened her grip on the handles. “I’ll give you two options: Go back behind your stand and forget this happened, or refuse and we’ll see just how green your blood is. Which will it be?”

The concessioner gulped, glancing down at the blades pressed up against his neck, and didn’t dare to move as he replied, “The former, my lady.”

And just like that, the girl stepped back and snapped her cane back into one piece. She gave him a bow, not nearly as deep as the one the other troll gave her. “A pleasure doing business with you.” Then she turned her back on him, leaving him to scramble back behind his stand, and stepped in front of Karkat.

“How about you?” She mused, her grin still wide and fanged as it was before. Karkat didn’t know where to look but at his reflection in the candy red of her glasses. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“Well, for starters, the asshole wasn’t lying,” Karkat said simply. “I’ll stand by what I said, calling him a cheap-ass midblood.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” 

“Yes.”

He shifted, not know how to elaborate. He pulled his sleeve a little bit away from his cut, wincing to find that it was almost dried in the wound. He hoped she didn’t see. “Shit.’

The girl tilted her head, her smile falling as she looked at him curiously. “Hm? Are you hurt?”

He bit back an insult. “What does it look like? The douche had a knife.”

“What does it look like,” she reiterated, amused. “What an odd question for a blind girl.”

Karkat blinked, looking her up and down more fully now. She held the cane planted in front of her, both hands on the head of it, which was carved to look like a dragon head, now that he saw it, with red gems inset on the eyes like her glasses.

He thought over his words for a few seconds before going with, “You’re blind?”

“That’s what I just said.” She replied.

Karkat felt a rush of relief. So, his secret wasn’t out after all. “I wouldn’t have noticed.”

She smiled, though it was more of a smirk now. “Most people don’t. They also don’t think there are other ways to see. People are idiots that way.”

She didn’t elaborate, or give him a chance to ask. She turned around, using the end of her cane to scoop the mound of gray fabric from the ground. She beat it, getting the worst of the dust off of it, and held Karkat’s cloak out to him.

He took it silently in one hand, letting his left one pull away from the wound and wincing at the sight of the dried blood all around the cuff of his sleeve. He pulled the cloak back around his shoulders, fastening the buttons closed.

All the while, the girl was looking at him with that same sense that she wasn’t looking at him, which made sense now knowing she was blind. Still, Karkat had to resist the urge to cover back up his cut, though there wasn’t anyone nearby to see, with most of the bystanders driven off by the fight.

“So, do I dare ask what your name is?” Karkat asked.

“Terezi Pyrope,” she said without hesitation. “Bounty hunter and legislacerator extraordinaire. Here’s my card.” She reached into the pocket of her vest and pulled out a slip of paper, putting it in Karkat’s hand.

He looked at it, confused. Firstly at how she even found his hand. And secondly, what was a blind girl doing legislacerating or hunting down criminals? She was probably his age, and nine sweeps isn’t exactly unreasonable to start working, but even then that still struck Karkat as too young to be doing that sort of stuff.

Then again, Karkat was technically a criminal she would be hunting down, so he could let that slide.

“How about you, nubs?” Terezi asked. “Unless you want me to call you that.”

“How do you know I have nubby horns?” Karkat asked, avoiding the question.

“Like I said, there are other ways of seeing,” she replied, her grip on her cane shifting. “Now, I believe I asked you something. What was it again?”

“If you insist,” he grumbled. “It’s Karkat.”

“Excellent,” Terezi said, and in a sudden blur of motion, one of the blades of her cane was pointed at him. “I’ll need your last name too. I need to know what to put on the paperwork.”


	2. Tyros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was Feferi Peixes, the heiress, the tyrianblood. She was the one in charge when her ancestor was at the other end of the galaxy, and she would be empress as soon as her ancestor died.  
> She had the galaxies at her fingertips, and she was not a fool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I write politically inclined seadwellers so much i'm not even good at it

Her name was Feferi Peixes. She was the heiress, the next in line. The empire was at her fingertips, all of the planets it covered and galaxies it owned; they would be hers once her ancestor died. Whatever she wanted, she got. She’d been in politics since she was practically a wriggler, and she was definitely not a fool.

“The idea works, you have to admit! Eridan, please, hear me out here,” Feferi exclaimed, her tone exasperated as it echoed around the stone hallway. She knew she could probably be heard from anywhere in the vicinity, but at the moment, she was too focused to care. “No one listens to what I have to say, at least not in regards to this. Not even you listen to me!”

Eridan Ampora was stagnant, with shoulders squared and draped in royal violet, and he didn’t hesitate to snap back, “I never stopped listenin’. For all the carpin’ that you do, I can’t turn my auricular clot away. The fact of the matter is simply that your logic is flawed.”

“It is most certainly not!” Feferi shouted. She through her hands up, the glittering gold bracelets on her wrist clinking together, as if emphasizing her point. “Ugh, just think about it! I—we—need to be the ones to change this. If we don’t put an end to this barbarism, no one will!”

“I would hesitate to call it barbarism. It was your ancestor who instituted the idea.” He crossed his arms, his ringed fingers clenched in fists. “It’s tradition, Fef. No good changing it.”

“See, it’s that kind of mindset that doesn’t get anything done,” Feferi told him, her finned ears folding back. “‘Oh, it’s tradition! Golly darn, I guess we can’t do anything about it!’ Puh-lease. Just because it’s a tradition doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Eridan heaved a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck like he always did when frustrated. “It’s worked is what I’m tryin’ to say here, Fef. The games are an important part of culture that many land-dwellers are, suffice to say, involved in. It keeps crowdin’ in prisons down, and it’s meant to serve as an example to keep further crime at bay, not that that out an’ out works on anyone, but it tries. You know all that better than I do; do want to risk compromisin’ the empire just to disestablish it?”

“If it ends the savagery that are the pugna, then yes!” Feferi retorted. “These fights are tools of fear, and you know it! Fear is never a way to adequately govern people you want to be loyal to you. Besides, it’s not like our justice system isn’t already corrupt with the continuous and repeated establishment of the hemospectrum on species it can’t even apply to. I can sure as glub tell you that!” 

“There is just no convincin’ you, is there?” Eridan asked, looking down his nose at her from behind his glasses.

Feferi shook her head, pursing her lips. “Not with this, no. I’ve thought about this for perigees, thinking and thinking and coming up with alternatives that no one’s bothered to listen to because ‘it’s a tradition.’ But you shouldn’t be trying to convince me otherwise, because you know I’m right in this, Eridan.”

“I know…” Before, his tone was defensive and his gaze was a glare, but he just couldn’t stay mad at her. She was too concerned, too sweet. Although she was dancing at the edge of the legendary imperious rage he was sure she inherited, he found himself tempering before her. She couldn’t be that mad, he was sure; she didn’t like getting mad. His gaze softened, and the defensive edge to his voice was all but gone as he replied, “Some empress you’re going to be, huh. So concerned about the well-bein’ of ‘your people’ as you said. It’s… Interestin’.”

She didn’t buy it. She bristled, rolling her eyes, and her tone dripped with condescension as she replied, “Yes, I’m actually going to care about the well-being of my people and focus on the territory we have instead of bringing more into this shitstorm. It’s such a tragedy, isn’t it!”

And then he was back on the defensive. 

His finned ears folded back against his head, and he practically bared his multiple rows of teeth when he snarled, “You are definitely gonna be a hell of an empress. Not sure if I’m looking forward to the day.”

She stared at him, her expression shifting between shock, offense, a bunch of other emotions, and finally anger in the minute she was silent. She wouldn’t—no, she couldn’t—be worse than the current empress. So much war and conquest and blood, it made her sick. She didn’t want to be feared by the people she was eventually supposed to rule.

She clenched her fists, her talons digging into her palms, and she was sure that, at that moment, she would have forked him had she had Ψdon’s Entente on hand. 

Fortunately for him, she didn’t, so she opted instead to bare her own fangs at him, all multiple rows of them, sharp and needle-like, and hissed back, “Maybe you won’t see the day, Eridan Ampora. Lots of things can happen to a pesky violetblood who doesn’t know his place, can’t they, Dualscar.” Her last statement, despite her wording, was obviously not a question. It was a threat.

Now it was his turn to look stunned, and then something flickered behind his eyes, and if Feferi didn’t know better, she would call it fear.

Eridan Ampora had faced a lot of people in his nine sweeps, rebellious lowbloods and belligerent highbloods alike that flung all manners of threat his way. He brushed them off, uncaring of what the landdwellers thought of him. They were powerless, unable to touch the royalty he was, but not in this case. 

He couldn’t brush her off, because unlike the land-dwelling plebeians everyone else was to him, the heiress Feferi Peixes was a powerful woman, royalty even higher than he was, intrinsic in the rich purple that ran through her veins. She was easily the most powerful person in the building, possibly this entire galaxy, and she was someone who could most definitely follow through on her threats. 

But he didn’t get the chance to respond to it. That was because at that point Feferi turned on her heel in a swish of black curls and translucent pink fabric, and stormed down the hall. Her small feet made big steps that echoed across the stone in conjunction with the clinking of jewelry, and even those sounds told how angry she was. 

Anyone in the arena could hear her. Hell, they definitely would have heard their fight. But Feferi didn’t care, any more than if they heard the exact topic of what they were fighting about.

After all, she was the heiress. What could anyone do about it?


End file.
